USTC essay 01

Compared to elementary education and skill education, higher education is kind of thinking based on something more primitive，simpler but more important. In my opinion, the key to higher education is about self-cognition, curiosity to world, critical thinking as well as love and tolerance for different kinds of culture.

As development of society, more and more people wants to receive higher education just for the desire of more chances to good jobs with high salary, ignoring comprehensive improvement for themselves. I am not to say the desire to get a better job is totally wrong, but that it is not the real higher education but more like skill education. Imaging that, we find a job for living, get married, raise some children and become weak and old for the whole life following the most people’s thoughts. How horrible it is! Nobody will tell us how invaluable our life is or that we can have a different life without drifting with the current. It is so important to live a life on our own will, and that means we can be ourselves and have our own lifestyle. As a result, in the first place, we need to know about ourselves through higher education.

As we all know，the world is colorful with different kinds of culture and races. By receiving education, we start to know the world, understand it and finally we are curious to explore how it forms based on the knowledge we learn by receiving education. However, an important point we must notice is what we have learned in books or classes is not perfectly right, and this is why I propose the critical thinking, which higher education will transmit to us. As unique individuals, we need to be independent both physically and mentally. We need to see the world through our own eyes, and make the judgment without just following others’ opinions. After all, no one wants to be a puppet, isn’t it? In the college, we see more colorful things, find more brilliant ideas, then we have doubts and finally query them.

The higher education not just provides students a larger stage and better atmosphere for study, but cultivates wisdom by keeping us curious to the word and never stop to learn. Only when we get these skills, can we solve the problems we may meet and find a new world. Once we achieve it, we can improve ourselves all the time. Logically, we can become what we want to be out of our heart. Then someday the world can be different because of us.

For higher education, the output is not necessarily consistent with the instant mode of input-output, the essence of higher education lies in discovering, understanding and changing the world. Through higher education, we know who we are, and always become curious, critical thinking and learn new things, so we can inspire ourselves beyond the former range of awareness and ability, thus promoting social progress.